The process of working on a cookbook with chef Rick Bayless went like this: Every week, Rick would send a set of recipes to me and my team to test. They were written in shorthand, and many of them—many more than I would have expected—included an abbreviation: mw, short for microwave.

This was unexpected. I didn't expect a chef, and certainly not a celebrity chef who has made a career out of celebrating the traditional foodways of Mexico, to rely on the microwave. But we were working on a book for home cooks, with recipes that needed to be doable on a weeknight. And Rick knew a few things about microwaves. One, he knew that they were in almost every American kitchen (more than 90% of them in 2001). Two, he knew that the microwave could be an essential secret weapon to prepare fresh (yes, fresh), healthy (yes, healthy) food.

People like me don't swallow this easily. Before working with Rick, I could count the number of times I used my microwave on one hand. (And all of those instances involved a frozen block of chicken stock that I needed to thaw quickly.) When it came to melting butter or chocolate, I set up a double-boiler. When it was time to roast some spaghetti squash, I slid it into the oven and settled in for a 45-minute wait. And when it came to cooking chicken or fish or pasta, I cooked it any way, every way—except in the microwave.

Rick did things differently. As I tested those "mw" recipes, I discovered that a spaghetti squash could go in the microwave and be ready to turn into al dente strands of "spaghetti" just 10 minutes later. That you could "blanche" cauliflower steaks in the microwave for a few minutes, and then cook them to a gorgeous char on the grill. And that a microwave can make a day-old tortilla taste as if it was made mere minutes ago.

By the time the cookbook was finished, I was a changed cook. I left Bayless and came to Epicurious pumped on the idea of microwaves. Ironically, this coincided with a move to a new city and a new apartment—an apartment that didn't come with a microwave and doesn't really have room for one. For the first time, I'm living in a home without a microwave, and now I really know what I'm missing.

You might be missing one, too: Microwave-less homes are slowly becoming the norm. While still popular, microwaves aren't selling like they used to. Sales have dropped (by 25% since 2000, according to some reports). It's not a coincidence that this decline has coincided with a rise in interest in fresher, healthier eating. Not a coincidence, but not justified, either. Yes, the microwave can be used to reheat plastic trays of preservative-packed foods. It's capable of nuking fresh ingredients into limp submission. But that's not the microwave's fault. Like any powerful weapon, it all depends on how it's wielded.

Microwaves are so powerful hardly anybody knows how to use them to their fullest advantage.

The truth is, contrary to its unhealthy rep, the microwave actually excels at vegetables. It steams as effectively as a simmering pot of water, only faster. And as the Epicurious Test Kitchen found out, it can steam more than squash and asparagus. Fish can come out of the microwave meltingly tender (without smelling up your kitchen). Even chicken can come out perfectly juicy. You just have to know how to microwave it right.

And there is a right way and wrong way. The utopian dream of pressing a button and having whatever is inside this magical box turn out perfect is, well, just a dream. The reality of the microwave is that if you just press START, you'll end up with food that is rubbery, dry, wrinkled, burnt, and inspiring in all the wrong ways. To really get great food with a microwave, it pays to see it more like sautéing or deep-frying. You have to choose the right heat (that is, power) level. You have to keep your eye on it. You have to have some skill.

So that's what we're tackling at Epicurious. We're honing our microwave skills. We're letting go of the bad memories, based on machines that were built 10, 15, 20 years ago, and finally seeing microwaves for what they are: Cooking technology. A big iPhone for food. A machine so powerful hardly anybody knows how to use it to its fullest advantage. An appliance that can make home cooks more powerful, too.